


With Friends Like These

by bixgirl1



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (it's Draco he's the idiot), (just a little!), (that totally isn't), (yes that one tracks), Coworkers to friends, Denial, Explicit Sex, Falling In Love, Friends Being Awful, Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Maybe a touch of pining but who knows, Secret Relationship, Sex Pollen, Snark, art prompt, idiot to lover, not Draco that's for sure, oh that reminds me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:55:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24723397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bixgirl1/pseuds/bixgirl1
Summary: Harry is suave (and also a total mess). Draco doesn't like mess (but is apparently very attracted to Potter's).Who on earth can guess where things will go once these two start working together?(Spoiler: Pretty much everyone but the person telling the story.)
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 85
Kudos: 1666





	With Friends Like These

**Author's Note:**

  * For [herman_the_moth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/herman_the_moth/gifts).



> Tumblr art prompt for [herman_the_moth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/herman_the_moth/pseuds/herman_the_moth)'s beautiful piece, which can be found [here](https://caroll-in.tumblr.com/post/188608400959/hope-you-like-it-goldentruth813-3). Tysm, sweets, for sharing it, and for being such a present joy in the fandom. <3
> 
> Many, many thanks to [GallifreyisBurning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyisBurning/pseuds/GallifreyisBurning) for the speedy, insightful beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

_"With friends like these, who needs enemies?" — Joey Adams_

  


*

The wreck of his life is not entirely his own fault, Draco thinks, sore-headed and blinking grainy eyes open to an uncommonly sunny June morning after yet another long night of very little sleep. Blaise was the one who’d originally encouraged him down the path of destruction, reading Draco’s employment offer from the Ministry with raised eyebrows and whistling through his teeth before finally saying, “Of course you should take it; you’re the best for the job, and Merlin knows it’ll be good for your reputation. Just don’t draw your wand when you run into Potter unless you want him to kill you.” 

And it was Pansy who’d convinced Draco when he paled, pairing the daggers she glared at Blaise with a smack to the side of his head. “Potter _won’t kill you_. Obviously. You’ve seen him in the papers, haven’t you? He’s barely recognisable, lately. Just pretend you don’t know him.”

Draco truly hates his friends sometimes.

Despite that, Blaise’s shit comment and Pansy’s shit counsel were what had kept Draco from pulling his wand upon seeing Potter at work, when every raw, jangling nerve he possessed was screaming it was the only appropriate action. Taking a deep breath, Draco stared at Potter silently, and kept himself from getting into an unnecessary duel by simply… committing to the idea that he had no clue who Potter was.

And that was _Draco’s_ first mistake.

Fascinated over his insight as his hangover tries to throb his brain loose, Draco holds perfectly still (mostly because he has a vague notion that movement might _actually_ make his head fall off) and stares up at his bed hangings to follow the wisp of thought before it disappears.

Though behaving as if he and Potter had never met wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done, neither did it prove to be particularly taxing. Pansy was right, after all: Potter, having been meticulously worked over by either professional handlers and/or Granger, barely even resembled the same boy Draco knew at Hogwarts. His glasses were gone in favour of vision charms, his unruly mop of hair had been magically tamed, and it seemed like he’d replaced his entire scruffy wardrobe with the tailored scarlet robes he wore when he was on duty and the designer suits he was photographed wearing in public or during interviews. Potter looked _good_ , Draco was able to admit — grudgingly, and only in the privacy of his own mind — when he thought about it, if in a blandly polished sort of way. But really, it was more than his looks; his entire bearing had changed as well: he spoke with authority, strode about with confidence, treated the public fascination about him with a pitying sort of amusement, and after that one, tense, silent encounter, addressed Draco with determined civility. 

All of which may or may not have left Draco feeling oddly unmoored during his first several months at work, but amused Pansy and Blaise to no end, and did wind up being extremely helpful in separating the old Potter from the fit-yet-annoying stranger who began popping down to his lab all the time with coffee, inane questions, and the occasional humorous observation. And it continued being helpful — “I told you so!” Pansy sang, before frowning and asking Draco something stupid about what kinds of beverages Potter brought to which overworked techs every Tuesday and Friday, and why he would do that, as if ingratiating oneself as a friendly Auror with the technicians who did the real work solving their cases wasn’t reason enough — right through to Potter’s twenty-seventh cup of coffee. That one was significant only for the fact that it was splashed all over the floor before Draco got to take a single sip, and because Potter was ranting at him, his newfound composure fully breached. 

Draco’s shouldn’t have argued back. Except, as it turned out, an angry, frustrated Potter was startlingly familiar, impossible to reimagine as someone Draco didn’t know, and seemed to suck all of Draco’s oxygen towards him after having been gone for so long:

“A _sex powder_ ,” Potter gritted out that day, his hands tight on Draco’s biceps, green eyes wide and pupils blown. “We’re covered in a _sex powder,_ and trapped in here for _how long_?”

The second burst of the powder Draco had been analysing happened two seconds after Potter had stalked in, was ten times bigger than the first — twelve seconds prior, when Draco spotted Potter in the lab through the window in his door — and had dusted them both in a thick layer of the stuff. Draco remained resolutely unimpressed that it took Potter nearly two minutes to absorb Draco’s prognosis and start reacting to the powder’s effects, as Draco clung desperately to the lab countertop, and absolutely _didn’t_ watch Potter tearing off his robes and yanking loose the knot of his tie, or scrubbing his palms over his face and disheveling his hair with frantic fingers, bellowing at Draco and edging closer to him the whole time. Potter’s riotous curls, freed from whatever charm he used, sprang up and out, shot through with magenta. After a few seconds, the shoulders of his clean white shirt were covered with the colour, too. 

Draco’s cock was harder than it had been in Potter’s presence in years.

“Neutralising techs should be here shortly, and it’s _not my fault,_ ” Draco gritted back, fumbling for his wand to throw a good hex and somehow only managing to squeeze Potter’s generous erection through his trousers. “ _You’re_ the one who ignored the contamination warning on the door.”

Potter shuddered and said, “I heard an — _uhhh, Malfoy_ — explosion, you utter shit, what was I supposed to do?”

“Wait for me to get decontaminated!” Draco yelled, or perhaps muttered, against the hot skin of Potter’s neck. “But _nooo_ , that would have meant missing—” he dipped his tongue into the hollow of Potter’s collarbone “— an opportunity for another first page spread on your bloody heroism, wouldn’t it?”

“Fuck you.” Potter twisted his head and scraped his teeth along Draco’s jaw. “Just, seriously, fuck off, you’re on my team, and you’re _you_ , you know me better than that anyway, why are you always _like_ this, oh god, right there, bloody hell that’s good don’t stop I mean _do_ , we’ll go out to dinner first, or not, yeah it’s, don’t, yes, fuck Draco—” he said, low and raspy, moving against Draco all the while. 

Taking a certain amount of license with his interpretation of that, Draco nodded and gave Potter’s cock another few fast tugs before letting go. Then he batted Potter’s too-slow hands away and undid his own belt and flies, because he hadn’t shot in his pants since he was a teenager, and he’d be damned for Azakaban on a murder charge if Potter’s slow clumsiness with something as simple as a belt buckle made him do it as an adult.

“You stop first,” he said, and moaned into Potter’s mouth as their cocks slid together.

“You are _kidding_.” Pansy’s deadpan was as loud as a shriek in Draco’s private room at St Mungo’s. “You and Potter— You two— Draco, you _didn’t—_ ”

“Is this the same powder you were telling me about?” Blaise asked, looking as interested as he ever had about anything in the history of Draco’s recall. “The anti-inhibition one designed to explode around people who are hot for each other?”

“That is _not_ what I told you,” Draco hissed, and Blaise rolled his eyes.

“I thought you spilled it. Draco, it didn’t explode, did it? _Did it_?” Pansy said, rounding on him, her voice rising as Blaise added, “Didn’t you also mention something about a necessary emotional atta—” and Draco panic-jinxed them both into silence.

But Draco at least _knew_ to anticipate a certain amount of humiliation from his awful friends. Humiliation induced by Potter’s blushing apology a few hours later was entirely unexpected, and not at all made better by the fact that Potter was still in his hospital gown and was wearing the glasses Draco had assumed were long gone. His hair was uncharmed too, and Draco was glad to note there was no powder left in its strands; they curled loose around Potter’s ducked head, soft as a cloud and dark as the most dangerous sort of omen. 

Glancing out the window, Draco wondered whether the generalised anti-arousal potions he’d been given upon arriving at the hospital might have been left on the shelf too long.

“It’s fine,” Draco said evenly, turning back when Potter ran out of words. He willed the heat in his face to recede. “They got to us before either of us, uhm, well, you know.”

He felt like a recalcitrant child. That last wasn’t _technically_ true, though Draco felt fairly righteous about not revealing the fact that he’d already begun uhm-well-you-know-ing when the technicians had burst in to spray them down with neutralising charms; there was no reason for Potter to know.

Potter lifted his head, his eyes narrowing a little. But he only said, “It’s not fine, though. Not really. You made a good point; there’s a reason locking charms prevent the techs from leaving their labs right after a mishap. You were just doing your job and you’re the best consultant we have, and we’re friends,” he blurted, earnest enough to make Draco blink. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

“We’re what, now?” Draco said, still blinking.

“Haha.” Potter lifted a shoulder, let it drop. Like he truly thought Draco was joking. “Anyway, it won’t happen again.”

“All right.” Draco paused, processing that revelation with an appearance of equanimity that he felt deserved prizes, as well as a moderate amount of gold. “I would appreciate that.”

Potter nodded but didn’t leave. Draco reined in his oncoming mental breakdown and watched him linger in the doorway, fidgeting with the ties holding together the side gap in his gown and shoving his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. His feet were quiet against the cold linoleum of St Mungo’s, and bare — bare as he was all the way up to the hem of his gown, drifting just above his knobby set of knees. The idea of skinniness they lent to was a lie though; Draco knew that now, had seen the wiry muscle stretched taut over Potter’s torso, knew everything that was hidden under that gown, could still remember the twitching girth of it, hot in his hand— 

“Malfoy?” 

“Fine, I’m fine.” Draco swallowed hard and decided to demand another blood test before Healers released him. 

“Good. It’s good that you’re fine,” Potter said slowly, frowning. “So... Is that a yes or no?”

And there went another mistake Draco couldn’t blame on his friends: Not paying attention to whatever the hell Potter had been saying in that moment, which turned out to have been something like _Will you be there after work on Friday at one of those ridiculous new Ministry mixers?_ and to which Draco had finally shrugged and taken a wild stab at the right answer by saying, _Yes?_

“Oh! Great!” Potter’s posture straightened in his surprise and, beaming an appallingly charming smile at Draco, he rattled off the name of a pub in the West End that Draco hadn’t realised served the wizarding public. “I’ve only gone to one, but it was okay. Most people got there by seven, but it’s basically when you’re done working so if you’re earlier or later, don’t worry about it.”

“Fine,” Draco said again, but faintly, because it most certainly was _not._

But it actually _did_ turn out to be fine, even though Pansy refused to join him — claiming the need to attend a fourth engagement party for her sister (which is an even bigger insult than Draco’d originally thought, he realises in retrospect, blast her; he’d been Pansy’s fucking plus-one at Violet’s wedding _the month before_ ) — and Blaise nearly laughed himself sick (not even bothering to humour Draco’s request with an answer) before closing his Floo in Draco’s face. It turned out fine because Draco’s friends were loathsome creatures he didn’t even like, really, and certainly didn’t need at all, and anyway, Potter wasn’t even at the pub when Draco stepped out of the Floo at half-past eight.

Full of polite excuses for why he couldn’t stay as Draco looked warily around at the crowd, he promptly forgot all of them upon being accosted by a very drunk Neville Longbottom, of all people. Longbottom rarely made direct eye-contact whenever he dropped off something at the labs from his greenhouses for Draco to use as a comparison sample, but on this occasion, his face lit up when he spotted Draco, and he cried out, _Malfoy! Why dun we ever chat over analysashuns, you’re so serious all the time, an’ Harry keeps saying you’re a pretty good bloke now, so we should have chats, I know all the best herbs, you know!_. He was joined a moment later by a fondly exasperated Hannah Abbott, who grinned at Draco’s befuddled, _I-I’m sure you do, Longbottom_ , and hauled Draco into a booth. 

With Longbottom’s cheek resting on the top of her head, Abbott explained that Longbottom always insisted on trying her experimental cocktails to be supportive, and that she should have known better than to let him leave their house right after. Then she launched right into questioning Draco about the ingredients in her cocktail that might have caused Longbottom’s reaction after only a few sips, which segued into a discussion about what potionary elements paired well with which types of alcohol to create a really good buzz. Draco lost track of time for the better part of an hour, until Potter showed up — Auror robes slightly windswept but, much to Draco’s relief, every hair in place.

He waved at Draco and shot him a pleased smile, but didn’t join them, thank Merlin, or approach Draco at all outside of work for the next several weeks. He did, however, resume bringing coffee to Draco on what Draco — with an uncomfortable spark of pleasure — finally realised were Potter’s lunch breaks. Because that was something friends did. And he and Potter were apparently friends. And that _was_ something Draco could blame on Pansy and Blaise: how slow he’d been on the uptake that not all friends were like them. Though they could (occasionally) be sort of wonderful when they weren’t busy being the very worst people alive, Draco knew quite well they were just as likely to spike his coffee with a diuretic as they were to bring him coffee at all. 

Potter was an entirely different sort of horrible: he snorted at Draco’s insults (or smiled, which was worse), poked around Draco’s lab with the curiosity of a toddler, and picked little arguments with Draco seemingly just for enjoyment’s sake, (because he’d usually just end up capitulating whenever his break was over). And if Draco’s mind occasionally wandered enough to provoke a physical reaction to the immaculately-presented work version of Potter, he simply registered those as a delayed response from the powder and was able to move on.

“We’re both clear that he’s exactly the type of guy you date, right?” Blaise said, checking over several trays of hors d'oeuvres before spelling them strategically throughout the room. He grabbed two glasses of champagne and shoved one into Draco’s hand as Draco sputtered outraged denials, because that wasn’t at _all_ true, he’d _never_ dated men like Potter, he liked men who— “That’s what I mean; they’re always well dressed and elegant, powerful, usually more pretentious than you are, and almost always dull as mud,” Blaise interrupted him to say. “The panel is still out on how boring he is, and I doubt he’s pretentious, but I’ve got no clue why getting a hard-on around him this afternoon is something you’d need to whinge at me about for over an hour, because he’s _exactly_ your type. Now, my mother and her new husband will be here in thirty minutes, so can we wrap this up please!” he said. 

“I’d be just as bothered if I got them for you!” Draco retorted at length, cautiously sure that made sense as a reason, though annoyed it took him the whole of Blaise’s dinner party, as well as a few additional hours, to come up with it. 

“You and me, both,” Blaise said with a sleepy glare. “The next time you wake me up over Potter, I will be having an extra conversation with number twelve before he’s gone,” he added, and again, shut his Floo in Draco’s face. Blaise made a habit of keeping interactions with his stepfathers to a minimum — engagement parties, weddings, the congratulatory dinner parties he threw post-honeymoons, and his twice-yearly visits to his mother’s house — for however long they lasted until their inevitable demises, so it was a good threat. Though Nova’s fondness for Draco kept him (probably) safe from her machinations, her husbands always went overboard trying to accommodate Blaise if and when he ever asked them for something. And since Draco was pretty sure that Nova would be inheriting a cartel of assassins this time along with her usual several vaults of gold, Draco refrained from giving in to the spiteful urge to ring Blaise every thirty minutes for the rest of the night and quietly retreated to bed. 

Regardless of how disturbing they were, Draco convinced himself that his bewildering on-and-off fantasies of Potter were irrelevant. They might have become friends, of a sort, but only at work. On mixer nights, Draco found himself spending most of his time with Hannah (persistently friendly, though Draco was waiting to find out what made her terrible because it felt bizarre to like someone so much who wasn’t), when she showed up at Longbottom’s side, which meant Draco spent a lot of time around him, too. (He was fine. Bit like a puppy.) Draco was never, not at all, disappointed that Potter, buttoned-down and straight from work, only ever smiled and nodded at him before getting called elsewhere in the pub or ambling over to a waiting Weasley. 

“Ugh,” Pansy wrinkled her nose, “how Potter looks at that red hair every day without going blind, I’ll never—” 

“Oh shut up,” Draco snapped, though Weasley still gave him these gimlet-eyed stares on occasion that Draco never knew how to respond to but was unfailing unnerved by. “You think I haven’t noticed how many people you date who share the exact same shade? Just marry into the family already and have done with it. I think the one who likes dragons is still single, and so is the Weasl— Ginerva, if you want to risk it; I doubt she’ll take any of your shit,” he said, probably partly because he was frustrated that all it took from Blaise was a raised eyebrow to get Draco to shut up after his threat. Pansy’s parents had been locked in such a cold marriage for years that one of their deaths under mysterious circumstances would have come as a shock to no one, and yet they were both too fearful of the Wizengamot to try anything. Pansy had flushed and glared in a way that indicated she’d get him back for his tone, and Draco made a mental note to apologise later, but at least she stopped interrupting while he vented.

So Draco continued going back, since Potter was right and the dos weren’t dreadful; Longbottom was occasionally funny, and no one in the pub refused to serve him, and Hannah continued to be suspiciously nice, and the rest of Draco’s coworkers and their spouses loosened up a little in Draco’s presence after enough alcohol. 

Having lost track of how many mistakes he’s tallied, Draco nevertheless pauses there to identify that one — allowing himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. That was where everything went off track. _That_ was what left him utterly unprepared, walking out of the Floo on Friday number seven, to find Potter lounging in a booth a few steps away, all by himself. 

Wearing his glasses again. 

And a black t-shirt with a fraying shoulder seam, which nevertheless fit him like a second skin. 

And red _trainers_ , one of which wasn’t even _tied_. 

And his hair looked… looked...

Well, it looked like _Harry Potter’s_ hair. 

Potter eyed him, lips quirking. He stretched out long, denim-clad legs under the table, raked careless fingers through his disaster hair, and tipped his mug of beer up to his mouth. When he set it back down, there was foam on his upper lip. He licked it away and gestured to the other beer on the table.

Draco sat (mistake probably nine thousand), and gulped down the majority of the other beer in one go. Breathlessly, he said, “I’m meeting Hannah. Abbott. She said—” He glanced around. The Ministry crowd was rather thin, or… entirely absent, actually, with the exception of one wizard he vaguely recognised from human resources. “Where is everyone?”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” Potter spread his legs under the table, bracketing Draco’s with them. Draco stared down at his sprawl for a beat, dragged his eyes back up, and found Potter watching him. _Smirking_. “Someone got the idea to rotate pubs every month or so, to make it fair for the staff who live farther away and don’t want to Apparate the distance every week. They were supposed to announce it in the morning bulletin.”

“I Vanish those as soon as they pop into my inbox,” Draco said, heart hammering. Potter shrugged and, dry-throated once more, Draco drained the last of his beer.

“Hmm. Now that you mention it, I think I might have seen you do that once or twice.” Potter tilted his head, a scrap of thick, wavy hair slipping down to obscure his lightning scar. “Sorry.”

“Then.” Draco shook his head. “So. Hannah’s… where?”

“Yeah, I got an Owl from Nev.” Potter took another sip. “He asked me to let you know that Hannah’s not feeling well.”

“But you were off duty today,” Draco pointed out.

“I didn’t mind. I keep trying to talk to you at these things anyway,” Potter said, dropping _that_ bombshell like it was nothing, yet sounding strangely disgruntled when he added, “but by the time people stop calling me over, you’ve always gone home.” 

Draco stared at him and considered ordering another seventeen drinks. “Why did Longbottom Owl _you_ , though? He knows my lab number.”

“I live near here.” Potter lifted his beer again, his gaze steady on Draco’s face over the rim of his mug, his throat working with long, rhythmic swallows, and Draco said, “How near?” 

Nearly every day since, Draco has spent at least a few moments trying to figure out why that was what came out. He could have said, _Well, I hope Hannah’s all right,_ or, _Thank you for the message, I’ll be going now,_ or, _Please, please, for the love of Salazar, put on a tie and brush your hair, who the hell **are** you, I cannot take this anymore_, or— well, _any other conceivable words in the fucking UNIVERSE_ , and his highly organised life probably wouldn’t have fallen so impressively apart. But he hadn’t.

The silence, as Draco scrambled for a way to fill it, lasted thousands of lifetimes. Then Potter finished his beer, grinned, and dug a Galleon from his pocket to drop on the table.

Ten minutes later, he was bending Draco over one arm of his sofa and fucking him within an inch of his life.

Gasping and whining into cushions that smelled vaguely of mildew and Doxy droppings as Potter slid devastatingly in and out of him, Draco told himself he was drunk; he told himself he’d been dosed with powder; he told himself that of _course_ he understood it, Blaise was right, hadn’t Draco only yesterday been admiring the smooth quiff of Potter’s hair and the clever Full Windsor of Potter’s red, Italian silk tie? And then Potter worked his fingers through through Draco’s braid and twisted the loosened strands around his hand and wrist, to tug Draco’s head back, timing it with an inward stroke of his cock so hard and perfect that Draco’s breath exploded out of him and stars danced behind his eyes for a beat; when his vision cleared, Draco found himself staring at a dilapidated armoire that seemed to have melted cheese burnt along the side of it. Draco fucked his hips back to take Potter deeper, snarling softly and doing it again when Potter groaned, and stopped lying to himself: Potter was still a fucking _mess._

The realisation wasn’t one that should have zipped an anticipatory throb to his own leaking cock, yet it did. That Potter was a mess came with few upsides (namely, that he kissed and fucked like one, too, as Draco was finally able to attest, with a bleeding lower lip and copious amounts of lube dripping down his crack to his bollocks), and a lot of drawbacks (that armoire, for one, and the fact that his parlour looked like a laundry bomb had been detonated in it, for another), and Draco didn’t _want_ to be so fucking turned on by it, but couldn’t help himself. Confusing him further was Potter's hand, working over Draco’s cock with just the right amount of speed and pressure, and Potter's relentless, deliberately angled pumps into him; it was like Potter was _trying_ to flaunt all of his many contradictions, and it pissed Draco off so badly, he cursed and came all over the side of Potter’s sofa. 

Body singing, he didn’t even bother wondering what the hell just happened. He simply went lax as Potter’s hips juddered and Potter came too, Draco's name falling, choked, from his lips, his fingers bit deep enough into Draco's hips to leave bruises. He slumped over Draco, breathing heavily, his chest sweaty against Draco’s damp back, his come leaking warm from Draco’s arse. Both of them were filthy, and Draco’s cock gave a feeble twitch; he tiredly decided he could figure it out at home. 

“I’ve really got to go,” he said, a few minutes into making out with Potter on his disgusting sofa. 

“Okay,” Potter said. 

An hour and a half later, Draco shook his head at Potter’s lazy offer to head to the bedroom, righted his clothes again, and hobbled to the Floo. Finally home, he spent the next two days wanking and resolving never to be alone with Potter again. 

“ _Why,_ ” he whispered in despair, banging his head against the door of the lab’s supply cupboard on the third day as Potter diligently sucked him off, “aren’t you wearing your _robes_ , you _fuck_?” 

Potter hadn’t used his hair charms, either, and his glasses were in place, though undoubtedly smudged by then. He pulled off and aimed a jaunty grin up at Draco, lips swollen and wet in the shadows. “I’m not on duty until tomorrow. I used my Cloak to sneak past the other techs,” he said, voice rough from taking Draco’s prick down his throat, and since they were all words in a language, and they would probably make sense once Draco could decipher them, Draco gulped and nodded and tightened his fingers in Potter’s shockingly silky hair to guide Potter’s mouth back where he wanted it, then returned the favour after he was done shaking.

He headed to Employee Resources as soon as Potter was gone to put in for a week of holiday leave. He needed some distance. 

Two hours later, he Owled Potter, who fucked him to four spectacular orgasms in three different rooms of Draco’s very organised flat. And then once a day for the remainder of the week, as Potter had _not_ taken holiday leave — though he inexplicably mumbled an offer to, as he rimmed Draco so skillfully that Draco still gets hard remembering it — and Draco had kept forgetting to change his wards to keep Potter out.

“I am _not_ fucking Potter,” Draco said, offended, several weeks into fucking Potter fairly without pause. 

Pansy huffed, crossing her arms. Beside her, voice dry, Blaise said, “I told you.”

“Told her what?”

“That you’d deny it,” Pansy said.

“There’s nothing to confess!”

“Draco.” Pansy poked him in the neck. “What’s that.”

“Lab accident,” Draco muttered, clapping a hand over the hickey. He found his wand and Glamoured it gone.

“So,” Hannah said, cheerful as ever at a mixer a few weeks later, when Draco returned from the loo, “you and Harry are… together?”

Horrified, Draco took in her sly smile — he’d known there would be _something_ of course — and shushed her so loudly that several people glanced over. “What? No!” 

“Yes you are.” Longbottom blinked and sent him a curious frown as Potter exited the loo, still flushed and sporting sex-mussed hair and half-undone robes that really hadn’t needed to be undone in the first place; that was Draco’s fault, because seeing Potter rumpled in his Auror robes — which he never was — for some reason got Draco so hot he could probably come just thinking about it if he tried. Brows furrowing, Longbottom waved at someone over Draco’s shoulder. “Harry said so. Didn’t he? Say that he and Draco are dating,” he clarified to whoever had wandered up, and Draco, with a sense of impending doom, held his breath. “Or did I get that wrong?”

“I truly wish,” Weasley said heavily, behind him. 

Longbottom lowered his voice, gaze darting. “Was it supposed to be a secret?”

And by that time, Potter had extricated himself from whichever random Ministry worker who’d waylaid him and was on his way over. Feeling as though he hadn’t blinked since he’d sat down, Draco strangled out a “No,” slipped from the booth, and strode to the Floo. 

Because doing… whatever, with Potter, _wasn’t_ supposed to be a secret. Which didn’t make doing it any easier to admit, because it was never a thing that was supposed to have happened in the first place. And although (or perhaps because) Draco’s past was riddled with bad decisions, he’d learned how important it was to always understand his own motives. He liked that that he was able to, rather a lot. Being able to look at himself, clear-headed, helped him understand other people, too. But Potter defied understanding, as did every single other element about Draco’s… whatever, with him. 

He spent the next few hours researching whether it was possible to make an Unbreakable Vow with oneself, if it pertained to something simple like not fucking someone you were sort of sure you shouldn’t be, even if you hadn’t yet figured out the reason. Finding a spell that ought to work wasn’t precisely the relief Draco thought it would be, but he copied it down, regardless. He stared at it, poured himself three fingers of whiskey even though it disagreed with his system, and put the spell in a drawer when Potter finally arrived. 

“Nev and Ron said something about our relationship being secret.” Potter kissed his way up Draco’s jaw, curling two fingers to brush over Draco’s prostate. “Was it supposed to be?” Shivering, Draco rolled from his side to his stomach to rut against his duvet. He felt Potter smile against the edge of his ear, but when Potter spoke again, there was a tinge of uncertainty to his voice that was new, and took Draco a moment to process. “Draco? If it was, I should probably tell you that I…”

Draco, liquid by then with want, twisted to kiss him, as long and slow and heated as Potter had seemed to decide his little fingering session would go on for, and then said, “Shut up and fuck me, Harry, or I swear to Merlin I'm going to roll you over and take a turn.” 

“You can,” Potter said softly, after a little pause, “if you want to.” 

Heart clenching so tightly at the blush rising over Potter’s cheeks, Draco’d had to bury his face in his pillow and lift his hips in the air to answer, because he didn’t think he could push the words from his throat. 

Draco squints as the shaft of sunlight coming in through his window takes on a warmer hue, spreading like honey over the foot of his bed. The thing is, he’s always been drawn to order. He _enjoys_ knowing that there's a place for everything, and keeping everything in its place. Finds comfort in the organised elegance of the universe, in the answers it provides to most of life’s riddles, if one is willing to look hard enough. He resents how fragile Potter has always had the ability to make his heart feel, and that he’s never been able to figure out why, and that his carefully constructed life has been razed to the ground in the wake of Potter’s existence, yet again. 

He should probably resent Potter himself more, but since neither Pansy nor Blaise is ever going to give Draco an orgasm like the ones Potter can, Draco’s willing to keep shuffling as much blame onto them as possible. At least until he uses the spell he found to regain his own self-control. Which he’s going to do, absolutely, very soon. Probably today. 

“Hungover?” Potter asks sympathetically, voice rusty with sleep. He shifts beside Draco, sits up and murmurs something, and Draco closes his eyes and wonders when the hell it became a _thing_ for Potter to stay the whole night, and why he’s not once thought to object. Potter nudges him with something cool and smooth — an elixir bottle, Draco thinks — and without waiting for him to respond, says, “Yeah. I saw you’d dipped into the whiskey when I got up for a piss last night. Take this; Hangover Cure.”

Draco frowns, then slowly lets Potter help him into a sitting position. He manages not to gag getting the potion down and, once he’s fairly confident his head will stay in place, turns to look at Potter. “How did you know where I keep my Hangover Cure?”

Potter peers at him with bright eyes through his dark mop of hair, which Draco’s cock seems to take as a signal to start perking up, and Draco thinks, _That’s why._ Resigns himself to forever being turned on by Potter’s perpetual bedhead, especially when they’re in bed, and _especially_ when Potter pairs it with one of his grins, sudden and wide, like now. 

“I snooped through your potions cabinet months ago,” he says shamelessly.

Draco bites down on a smile, turns his snort into a scoff. “How did you know whiskey gives me hangovers?”

“You mentioned it,” Potter says, shrugging. “God, I don’t know when. Back when we first started hanging out.” Potter-speak, apparently, for ‘when I started annoying you during work hours.’ Then his smile softens, and he says, “Happy birthday.”

“Oh,” Draco says. Because he’d known, of course, that it was, but not that Potter smiling that way and saying something so mundane would be the thing that made Draco realise he'd at some point fallen in love with the arsehole. He blinks. “Thanks.”

“Hey, I got something for you, but I left it at my place. Want to come with me in a bit to fetch it?”

“Your place is disgusting,” Draco says, scowling at the thought of going back there. Then again, maybe it will cure him of this love thing. “I’ll wait.”

Potter gives him a half-smile/frown thing and tilts his head, laughing a little. “What? Is _that_ why you’ve never come back? Draco, you’ve only seen my basement. My house is fine. I mean, messier than yours, maybe, but that can probably be said of most hospitals, too. Come with me; I’ll show you. I’ll take you out to lunch first,” he says, temptingly. As though Draco’s non-response to his question last night about their status has completely settled things in his mind. He’s completely daft for thinking so, and completely irritating for not being wrong.

“Fine,” Draco says, continuing to scowl but spreading his legs a little when Potter sneaks a hand under the covers to run it warm up Draco’s thigh.

“Birthday blowjob?” 

“Yes, okay,” Draco says, and willingly allows Potter to take him apart. 

Still relaxed from his orgasms a few hours later, Draco doesn't complain about the walk to Potter’s house from the — thankfully Muggle, and appropriately delicious — establishment Potter picked for lunch. He even holds Potter’s hand, which Potter doesn’t relinquish even as he discreetly pulls his wand to unlock his door. Ready with a list of insults about Potter’s decor, Draco comes easily when Potter pulls him inside, and then draws to a hard, stunned stop.

A small crowd is assembled: Blaise and Pansy (standing suspiciously close to Ginevra Weasely, who has no reason to even be here); Hannah and Longbottom — her smiling wide, him a bit sheepishly — are next to Weasley and Granger (who also don’t have a reason to be there, except that they’re Potter’s best mates, and since they both look sort of stoic, Draco won’t object); several of Draco’s friendlier coworkers. He doesn’t _exactly_ hear the cheer that erupts from them, but he sees the shape of it from every mouth, and it matches the same cheer written, in silvery-white sparkles, across the air above everyone’s heads:

_Happy Birthday, Draco!_

Pansy’s smile is utterly wicked with glee — she’ll have had a hand in it, Draco knows — and though Blaise looks bored because he always looks a little bored, there’s a telling air of smugness about it this time. 

“Is it okay?” Potter asks, quietly. Anxiously. He’s grinning when Draco turns to gape at him, but his eyes are watchful. “I wanted to do something special for… Since…”

Draco’s heart pounds in his throat. He feels a bit sick, and a lot like Apparating away, and a little like laughing, and sort of like crying, too, which generally makes him angry, but — fuck it. Bring on the chaos.

“ _No,_ ” he says, choosing the laugh from his options, and again when Potter sighs with relief into the kiss Draco boldly takes. “I hate it more than anything, you lot are the _worst_ ,” he tells them all. He pulls Potter deeper into the (frustratingly tasteful) living room, and turns back to him. “But I might be persuaded to stay."

"How?" Potter asks; he runs an assessing look down the length of Draco's body, and Draco inhales sharply. It takes him a beat to find his voice, but he can't hide his smile.

"Just— promise you didn’t let Pansy or Blaise near my cake.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are lovely. 
> 
> Also, I'm on [tumblr](https://bixgirl1.tumblr.com/) too! *waves*  
> (And so is [herman_the_moth](https://caroll-in.tumblr.com/)!


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